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Comments Off on Health Care Workers Now Choose Alternative Medicine
Posted by docakilah on November 14, 2011

By Dr. Mercola

Alternative medicine is no longer so “alternative” for health care workers, the majority of whom use a variety of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) for themselves.

In fact, 76 percent of health care workers use CAM, compared to 63 percent of the general population, according to research in the journal

Health Services Research. Even more revealing, health care providers, including doctors and nurses, were more than twice as likely to have used practitioner-based CAM, and nearly three times as likely to use self-treatment with CAM, during the prior year than support workers.

It seems health care workers are poignantly aware of many of the pitfalls of modern medicine and as such are embracing more holistic modalities. As psychiatrist Joya Lynn-Schoen, M.D., who practices alternative medicine, told Health Behavior News Service, part of the Center for Advancing Health:

With holistic therapies, attention is directed to finding the rootcause of disease so you can heal on a deep, instead of surface, level. In simpler terms, holistic medicine focuses on health, whereas conventional medicine focuses on disease.

Holistic Medicine Increasing in Popularity

The trend of CAM use among health care workers is mirrored by that of the general population. Increasing numbers of people are looking for treatments that fall outside of the realm of conventional medical care, often because conventional medicine has failed them or even made their conditions worse.

In 2007, more than 38 percent of U.S. adults used complementary and alternative medicine, along with 12 percent of children — a rate that’s been increasing since 2002. This amounts to 4 in 10 adults, and 1 in 9 children, embracing CAM. According to the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, while CAM is used by people of all backgrounds, use is greatest among women and those with higher levels of education and income

CAM practices are very diverse and include, but are not limited to:

Nutritional medicine

Holistic Nutritionist

Naturopathy

Chiropractic

Herbalism, homeopathy, and nutritional-based therapies

Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and acupuncture

Ayurveda

Meditation and hypnosis

Are You Fed Up with Prescription Drugs and Surgery?

Taking medications and having surgery is clearly not the route to optimal health that the modern medical system would have you believe it is. Dr. Null and colleagues published an oft-cited report in 2003 about the death toll caused by drugs and conventional medical treatments, which included the following statistics.

Adverse drug reactions — 106,000 deaths/year

Medical errors — 98,000 deaths/year

Unnecessary procedures — 37,136 deaths/year

Surgery — 32,000 deaths/year

Additionally, a June 2010 report in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, which analyzed 62 million death certificates from 1979 to 2006 (the most recent year available), found that almost a quarter-million of those deaths were coded as having occurred in a hospital setting due to medication errors. In an AMA article discussing the study, one co-author was quoted as stating that “medication errors are the second-leading cause of accidental death, and the only kind of accidental death that is increasing over time.”

An estimated 450,000 preventable medication-related adverse events occur in the U.S. every year, and adverse drug reactions cause injuries or death in 1 of 5 hospital patients. The costs of adverse drug reactions to society are more than $136 billion annually — greater than the total cost of cardiovascular or diabetic care.

Further, an analysis in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2010 found that 18 percent of patients were harmed by medical care(some repeatedly) and over 63 percent of the injuries could have been prevented. In nearly 2.5 percent of these cases, the problems caused or contributed to a person’s death. In another 3 percent, patients suffered from permanent injury, while over 8 percent experienced life-threatening issues, such as severe bleeding during surgery.

In all there were over 25 injuries per 100 admissions! In other words you have a one in four chance of getting injured if you are admitted to the hospital, not very good odds by any stretch. So it is easy to understand why some people are abandoning conventional medicine like rats leaving a sinking ship! Alternative medicine typically offers a more positive treatment experience and typically produces better results, and Americans are also increasingly distrustful of prescription medicines, and rightfully so!

Holistic Medicine Helps You Take Control of Your Health

The more you take responsibility for your own health — in the form of nurturing your body to prevent disease — the less you need to rely on the “disease care” that passes for health care in the United States.

But in the event you do need medical care, seek a health care practitioner who will help you move toward complete wellness by helping you discover and understand the hidden causes of your health challenges … and create a customized and comprehensive — i.e. holistic— treatment plan for you. You and your family CAN take control of your health, and you can typically do so using lifestyle choices and other natural, holistic strategies.

When observing the state of modern medicine and the unprecedented influence of pharmaceuticals, an interesting paradox arises. The drug companies claim that pharmaceuticals can do wonders for people: lower their cholesterol, end clinical depression, reverse osteoporosis, eliminate allergies, calm your children and many other similar promises. But if prescription drugs are so good for people, where are all the healthy medicated customers?

There aren’t any to speak of. There’s nobody taking twelve prescriptions who has a clean bill of health. In fact, the more prescriptions a person takes, the worse their overall health. And if you approach the healthiest people you can find in a local fitness center and ask what prescription drugs they’re taking in order to be so healthy, they’ll give you a rather confused look: they don’t take prescription drugs!.

So how is it that the pharmaceutical industry can be claiming to make people healthier in the first place? And what happened to common sense here? A rigorous scientific view of the whole situation can only conclude that prescription drugs are, in fact, making people sicker. It’s like a massive clinical trial, and the results of the trial are rather obvious: we’re swallowing more drugs than ever, and we’re getting sicker. In fact, the more drugs a person takes, and the longer they take them, the more rapidly their overall health deteriorates.

So why are drugs approved in the first place?

During development, prescription drugs are designed to target a single measurable marker, such as cholesterol levels or bone density. There are thousands of such markers to target in the world of modern medicine, and if a specific drug can alter any measurable marker in a positive direction — without killing too many people during the clinical trials– the FDA eventually declares it to be “safe and effective” and the drug is unleashed for public consumption.

Indeed, the drug may effectively impact that one marker. But here’s where the problem starts: every drug has a systemic effect, and these systemic effects are not accurately measured (or admitted) in clinical trials. For example, statin drugs do, in fact, lower bad cholesterol levels. But they do this by compromising the ability of the liver to create all types of cholesterol, including the “good” cholesterol and important hormones that the body manufactures from cholesterol. Statins may have one measurable, positive effect according to the medical charts, but they simultaneously throw off the body’s healthy physiology in a hundred other ways such as blocking your sex drive.

Clinical trials don’t pay much attention to these other effects; they’re just looking to prove one particular thing and get FDA approval to market the drug as a miracle cholesterol fighter. What other effects the drug has on the human body are largely ignored. And when clinical trial participants start showing these severe effects, they are typically “dismissed” from the trial in order to ensure that trial results look positive. In this way, extremely toxic drugs are actually approved by the FDA as “safe.”

Prescription drugs represent a war on the American people

This situation means that, right now, prescription drugs are killing 100,000 Americans each year and injuring more than two million. Those are the statistics from the Journal of the American Medical Association, and that figure doesn’t include the 40,000 or so who are killed each year by over-the-counter pain medications. These are staggering figures: it’s like having twenty-five 9/11 attacks each year, but instead of terrorists flying the airplanes, it’s pharmaceutical company CEOs. There are more deaths and injuries caused each year by pharmaceuticals than in any U.S. war or conflict since World War II.

And yet pharmaceuticals continue to be marketed as miracle drugs that can help people be healthy. But as I’ve mentioned, there are no extremely healthy people taking lots of prescription drugs!

The counter argument

The obvious counter to this argument is that people only start taking prescription drugs after they’re already sick. But that’s not true: statins are now being pushed onto perfectly healthy people who have cholesterol levels of 115, for example. They’re supposed to start taking statins as a preventative measure, even though there’s nothing wrong with them. With a similar lack of wisdom, the American Diabetes Association has recommended that all diabetics start taking statin drugs even though there is no scientifically proven benefit to doing so just in case some benefits are someday discovered!

And statin drugs are already known to cause an alarming number of dangerous side effects. After being consumed for just a few days, statin drugs start interfering with normal liver function. Within a matter of weeks or months, the patient often shows new symptoms or disorders. Upon visiting a western medical doctor, they are diagnosed with another disease or condition and — guess what? — given another prescription drug to take in combination with the statins. In the business world, this is called “upselling the customer” — getting the same customers to buy more stuff, thereby greatly increasing your profit margin.

And so it goes: one prescription after another, like boxcars on a train, until the patient is: 1) financially depleted, and 2) suffering the ravages of extreme chemical toxicity from prescription drugs. By the time a typical patient finally dies from complications caused by the prescription drugs, they may have spent $100,00 or more on drugs alone. And that number can be multiplied even further if “heroic drugs” are prescribed during the patient’s last surviving days.

Dangerous drug interactions are rarely tested

There’s another factor to consider here, too: prescription drugs are rarely tested for dangerous interactions with other drugs.In other words, even though the FDA might have approved drug A for one thing, and drug B for another, nobody ever tested what happens in human beings when both drug A and drug B are taken together. Far too often, the combination is toxic,and many prescription drug combinations are fatal.Those that are not fatal may cause other injuries, meaning they will destroy the patient’s liver or pancreas, which will of course create demand for even more prescription drugs to deal with those issues.

In this way, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. When you visit a western medical doctor and take even a single prescription, you’re caught in the spiral of pharmaceutical dependence. The only way to escape this trap and actually restore your health is to give up all prescription drugs and, instead, make radical changes to your diet and lifestyle– and seek out naturopathic or holistic treatments — to restore your health. This is the only way to create lasting health.

Where are all the healthy, happy, athletic prescription drug takers?

Getting back to the main point here, doesn’t it make sense that if prescription drugs made people healthy, there would be all sorts of healthy, happy, athletic people walking around touting the benefits of all the drugs they’re taking? If drugs were good for you, there should be hundreds of thousands of such people right now. They should be mentally sharp, have low body fat, high bone density, healthy digestive tracts, healthy blood chemistry, vibrant skin, high energy, excellent moods, and so on. And yet this is not at all the case.

Typically, when you meet a person who is taking multiple prescription drugs, they are overweight or obese, chronically fatigued, mentally depressed, sickly in appearance, mentally clouded, suffering from several blood chemistry problems, burdened with weak immune systems, suffering from low bone density, and emotionally unstable. Sadly, this is not only the typical prescription drug patient I’m describing here, this also describes many doctors and health care workers who dole out the drugs in the first place.

Given this reality, it takes a great leap of imagination to believe that prescription drugs are somehow good for you.

The promise of drugs is seductive

It’s seductive, of course, to imagine that perhaps your state of mental anguish is simply a “brain chemistry imbalance” that can be corrected with antidepressant drugs. It’s tempting to treat your osteoporosis with a doctor-recommend pill rather than getting into the habit of daily walking. It’s convenient to live on heartburn medications instead of having to make healthy food choices for a change. Popping pills is always easier than changing your life, but popping pills is like making a deal with the Devil: you always end up losing.

When you take prescription drugs on a long-term basis, you’re sure to come out worse than when you started. Prescription drugs are only appropriate for short-term interventions that save a patient’s life while they make radical changes to their diet, nutrition and lifestyle that correct the underlying imbalances. For example, an obese middle-aged man suffering from extremely high cholesterol is obviously at risk of a sudden heart attack. Statin drugs might be legitimately used for a few weeks or months just to keep the guy alive while he makes radical lifestyle changes that will ultimately bring his cholesterol (and his body weight) down to reasonable levels.

The legitimate uses for prescription drugs

That’s a reasonable, legitimate use of prescription drugs. But that’s not the way they’re being promoted today. Thanks to the culture of greed and widespread lack of ethics at pharmaceutical companies, statins and other drugs are being pushed as lifetime medications while any mention of diet, nutrition or exercise is either completely avoided or, at best, glossed over. The result is that patients are told drugs are the only answer.

Doctors are culpable in this as well: most don’t even understand nutrition 101, and few bother to take the time to work with patients on lifestyle changes in the first place. Of course, most doctors would say that it’s the patients who aren’t interested in making changes, and they’re right about that, but there’s also something rather negligent about the fact that the vast majority of doctor visits result in a 90-second conversation and a prescription for the latest brand-name drug. (If you’re a medical doctor and don’t fit this description, good for you! But make no mistake: your colleagues are miserable healers…)

So why are prescription drugs so popular?

The only reason prescription drugs are so popular today is not because they work, but because they are extremely profitable. It’s profitable for the drug companies who mark them up as much as 500,000% over the cost of the raw ingredients, it’s profitable for retailers like Walgreens who mark them up even further (and whose business relies primarily on drug profits), it’s profitable for newspapers and magazines who gladly cash checks for millions of dollars in drug advertising, and it’s even profitable for doctors who receive all sorts of free vacations, “consulting fees,” and other not-so-subtle bribes in exchange for writing prescriptions for brand-name drugs.

The system is extremely profitable to everyone… everyone except you, that is. You suffer devastating health consequences when you participate. You get stuck with the medical debt. Your insurance rates go sky-high. And to add insult to injury,you’re sicker now than before you started taking the drugs!

Our system of modern medicine is a sham, folks. It’s primarily a drug racket that’s dominated by Big Pharma. The science is largely distorted (and often outright fraudulent), the ethics have all but disappeared, and the long-term price of all this is going to be enormous. We have an unprecedented problem on our hands that’s sickening an entire generation and creating stratospheric long-term health care costs for the next round of working taxpayers unlucky enough to stumble onto all this.

But don’t worry: when everybody’s sicker than ever, the drug companies will promise they have the next big cure. All you have to do is pop daily pills at $200 each, and all your health problems will be solved!

Comments Off on Pharmacies vs. Health Food Stores
Posted by docakilah on July 6, 2011

by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger

The drug industry is constantly trying to convince you that drugs are good for your health while nutritional supplements and healthy foods are somehow bad for you. This same line of nonsense is also repeated by the FDA, which goes out of its way to censor the truth about the healing properties of natural foods like walnuts, cherries and berries. (http://www.anh-usa.org/wp-content/u…)

The drug industry and the FDA are, of course, just plain wrong about all this. Although their advertisements show happy, healthy people taking pharmaceuticals, in the real world, people who take their drugs are extremely unhealthy, depressed and highly toxic.

But don’t take my word for it: Check out the people walking in and out of pharmacies versus the people who visit health food stores:

• People who visit pharmacies tend to have toxic livers, poor kidney function (because drugs damage the kidneys), wild mood swings, terrible digestion and elimination capabilities, poor skin health, poor posture, low energy, sleep disorders and sexual dysfunction. They tend to be suicidal while living in chronic pain. They have huge medical expenses that often send them into bankruptcy.

The choice is up to you

Which group would you prefer to join? You can choose either one by deciding what to put in (or on) your body. If you choose to contaminate your body with pharmaceuticals and medications, you will experience increased liver and kidney toxicity, reduced cognitive function,skin health problems, sexual dysfunction, mood disorders and other such problems.

On the other hand, if you choose to nourish your body with superfoods, organic products, healing herbs and nutritional supplements, you will experience a more healthful and joyful life with improved brain function and memory, healthy skin, stable moods, abundant energy, restful sleep and healthy fertility, among other benefits.

The pharmaceutical industry wants you to choose their drugs, of course, and they don’t care what happens to your health and happiness as a result. In fact, the worse your health gets after taking their drugs,the more of their drugs you’ll need! The side effects of one drug become the “disease” that’s treated by another drug, so it’s all great for repeat business!

Keeping you ignorant

What the drug industryand the FDA absolutely do NOT want you to learn is that healing foods, herbs and supplements make virtually all pharmaceuticals obsolete. If you really knew the truth about what these items can do to protect your health and cure degenerative disease, you’d probably never take another chemical pill in your life. That’s whythe FDA works so hard to censor nutritional supplements and make sure they can’t make truthful, scientifically-validated claims on their labels. (http://www.anh-usa.org/tell-the-fda&#8230;)

The FDA has even gone after healing foods. The scientific literature says conclusively that walnuts lower high cholesterol. It’s the natural result of eating the healthy plant-based oils in the walnuts. The FDA, however, has threatened walnut companies with fines and imprisonment for merely linking to scientific studies that describe the health benefits of walnuts.

This is how the FDA keeps people in the dark and achieves its agenda of censoring the truth about foods and supplements while promoting toxic pharmaceuticals that keep the drug companies in business.

Change your decisions and you’ll change your life

It’s up to you to determine how the rest of your life will be experienced. If you continue to find yourself standing in line at the local pharmacy, or if you look in your medicine cabinet and notice a half-dozen prescriptions, let that be a wake-up call. These drugs will never give you health or happiness. They will never create the life you’re truly looking for.

Instead, take a walk to the other side of the street. Walk into a health food store. Ask the friendly staff how to get started with healthy living. These people are incredibly helpful, by the way, so don’t be afraid to ask questions.

Spend your money at the health food store instead of the pharmacy and your entire life will improve as a result. As you improve your physical health, your brain health will get better, too, and you’ll notice life getting better in many ways: Improved relationships, enhanced career (because having a healthy mind improves your job performance, too!), improved self image, increased stamina and much more.

You’ll sleep better, eat better, think better, poop better and feel better. Everything your body is supposed to do naturally will simply work better as you align yourself with the natural laws of health and nutrition. You can embrace those laws by visiting practically any health food store and taking advantage of the remarkable health-enhancing products they carry.

So find your local health food store and give them a visit! I even support Whole Foods, too. I realize there has been some controversy about Whole Foods, but compared to all the other grocery stores, Whole Foods has achieved some astounding accomplishments. I’m glad Whole Foods is successful, because I sure wouldn’t want to go back to shopping at some conventional (toxic) grocery store, would you?

Remember, you vote with your dollars— both in terms of what industries you support as well as what health outcome you will create. If you invest your dollars in natural health products, you will get a healthy result.

So the next time you have a choice between pharmaceuticals versus healing foods, walk over to the health food store and choose healing foods!

Comments Off on Why Being A Female Equals BIG BUCKS For The Medical Society
Posted by docakilah on May 10, 2011

Female Patients Translate into Huge Possibilities for Medical Doctors

Women stand the greatest risk of receiving an unnecessary medical procedure. If you are a female living in the US, when it comes to healthcare, you might as well have a target on your back.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that one-third of American women have had a hysterectomy by age 60; and half of them have had one by age 65. Yet 85 percent of these surgeries are unnecessary, according to Ernst Bartsich, a clinical associate professor at Weill Cornell Medical College.

If you’ve had a complete hysterectomy, meaning you’ve also had your ovaries and cervix removed, you don’t need a Pap test, which examines cells scraped from your cervix. Yet, a study in 2004 showed that 10 million women a year who don’t have a cervix are still getting Pap tests consisting of a scraping of cells from their vaginal walls – when no professional organization recommends this screening for women without a cervix!

For younger women who are in their child-bearing years, the health profession has found a different way to make money off you, to the tune of an extra $3 billion a year.

And the complications can be serious, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal, putting the babies at increased risk of brain, liver, and lung development problems. Caesarean-delivered babies are also more likely to need CPR, and to have significantly higher rates of respiratory distress, sepsis and hypoglycemia.

So why are C-sections so prevalent?

It’s largely a desire for control on the part of families, physicians and hospitals, the WSJ reported.

And according to USA Today, there’s another reason: “economic incentives” for doctors and hospitals to use these procedures, including bonuses for labor inductions which add costs and increase the risks for C-sections (surprise!).

So there you have it: for the sake of economic incentives, convenience, and control over what day and even time of day the birth occurs, babies’ lives are being put in danger – at an additional annual cost of $3 billion to the U.S. health care system.

From birth through teenage years, our current health care system has a goal of maximizing each new little profit center we usher into their business model. Because that’s what the system is designed to do, put profits first at the expense of everything else, including the health of our babies.

What chance do YOU have against this system?

Educating yourself and your family to their business model and their seemingly endless tricks to maximize profits. Because an educated and healthy consumer is the worst enemy of our current “sick care” model that passes for health care in the US.

Wait a Minute, Isn’t This Outrageous?

The drug and medical industry’s mounting greed IS outrageous, especially when you consider in this specific instance of C-sections the National Institutes of Health (NIH) says that 33 to 75 percent of C-sections are totally unnecessary! What’s really maddening is that a study done between 2005 and 2006 showed that the cost of hospital charges for maternal and newborn care rose from $79 billion to $86 billion in just one year, with $2.5 billion of it as a result of unnecessary C-sections. In fact, delivering babies is the #1 profit center in hospitals, and rising every year.

Some points to ponder:

In 2008 (latest data available) facility charges billed for “mother’s pregnancy and delivery ” and “newborn infants” ($98 billion) far exceeded charges for any other hospital condition in the United States.

“Mother’s pregnancy and delivery” and “newborn infants” were the two most expensive conditions billed to Medicaid in 2008, involving 26 percent of hospital charges to Medicaid, or $46 billion.

Nineteen other countries in the world have lower C-section rates than the U.S.; 29 nations have lower maternal mortality rates; 35 have lower early neonatal mortality rates; and 33 have lower neonatal mortality rates.

This last statistic is particularly concerning, because despite outspending every nation on the planet on healthcare, there are 29 or more countries ahead of the US in key childbirth related mortality rates. Simply stated, the US spends more money to have more mothers and both pre-term and full-term children die than just about 30 other nations.

But I’d venture a guess that our profit margins for corporations contributing to these staggeringly bad mortality numbers is NOT below those in the other 30 nations that are safer places to have a baby.

And if there were stockholders who held shares in something called the “public health” corporation, they would be in absolute revolt over these numbers and boards of directors of this corporation would be under pressure to resign. Wait a minute, isn’t the US Government the head of something much akin to a “public health” corporation?

So where is the outrage in the shareholders (you)?

Some Top-Selling Drugs Cause More Harm than Good

I don’t even need to say the word Vioxx to explain how some drugs do more harm than good. From anti-psychotics to pain-killers, cancer drugs and statins, many top-selling drugs are nothing more than ways to make drug companies and drug prescribers simply richer.

As an example, I’m offering this short list of drugs that, like Vioxx, have shown they can cause harm. But be aware: This is just a sampling. The list of all the drugs that belong in this category is so long it’s not possible to include them all here:

Avandia, the diabetes drug for which its maker, GlaxoSmithKline, has agreed to pay $250 million to settle 5,500 claims, can cause heart attacks and kill users. GSK said in January it planned to set aside $6.4 billion for costs relating to litigation on this drug. LINE BREAK Avandia was recently pulled off the market in Europe due to its health risks. A 2007 study linked it to a 43 percent increased risk of heart attack and a 64 percent higher risk of cardiovascular death than patients treated with other methods. More than 80,000 diabetics have suffered lethal heart attacks from this dangerous drug.

11 cholesterol drugs, commonly known as statins, are linked with serious side effects. Statins are HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors, acting by blocking the enzyme in your liver that is responsible for making cholesterol (HMG-CoA reductase). The fact that statin drugs cause side effects is well established—there are now 900 studies proving their adverse effects, which run the gamut from muscle problems to increased cancer risk

The birth control pills Yaz and Yasmin were touted to be safer than any other pill on the market when they first came out. But it wasn’t long before a flurry of lawsuits began claiming that they cause numerous health problems including deep vein thrombosis (blood clots in the deep veins), strokes, heart attacks and gallbladder disease.

Levaquin, a powerful antibiotic, has been linked to tendon ruptures of the Achilles, shoulders, biceps, hands and thumb, and is the target of multiple lawsuits.

Accutane, a drug that was used to treat acne for many years, is also the center of multiple lawsuits. It was pulled off the market in 2009 after users reported side effects that included severe gastrointestinal problems including Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Elevated risk of birth defects in the children of pregnant women also were reported.

Other dangerous drugs that have either been pulled off the market or are the center of lawsuits (even as they are still sold) include the smoking cessation drug Chantix, the pain killer Darvocet, the “bone-strengthening” drug Fosamax, which is made up of bisphosphonate compounds that have been found to actually contribute to bone death, the statin drug Crestor, the serotonin re-uptake inhibitor (SSRI) drug Paxil, which has been linked to suicides and suicidal thoughts, and many, many others.

The truth is vaccines are just another way that Big Pharma makes money by selling something that might make you sick – or sicker. Just one example is the flu vaccine: officials now know that the seasonal flu vaccine in 2008-2009 did absolutely nothing to prevent flu in children – and actually increased their risk of getting H1N1!

Yet, with the help of the rulings by the World Health Organization (WHO), the CDC, the FDA and individual states’ mandated vaccination schedules, vaccine makers have a guaranteed bank roll in the form of your children.

Take Control of Your Own Health

We know nearly 26 million Americans now have diabetes, and over one in four of all Americans have either diabetes or pre-diabetes. We know the cost to treat heart disease in the U.S. is expected to triple by 2030, and that high blood pressure and cholesterol are “out of control” in the U.S.

We also know the U.S. spends more on health care than any other industrialized country. Yet, despite all this spending, the U.S. ranks 14th in mortality rates worldwide – meaning 13 other countries have a lower preventable death rate than the U.S. despite spending less money on health care, and two of these countries are the now nearly bankrupt nations of Greece and Ireland!

But the question is — why?

Some analysts say this poor showing is linked to declining rates of insured persons in the U.S. Others claim the figures are just plain skewed. But I suspect the high U.S. mortality rates have more to do with our obesity rates, lifestyle patterns, and our seriously flawed health care paradigm (“sick care”) than it has to do with insurance coverage or skewed numbers.

The current US “healthcare” paradigm is the one that defines preventive care as ingesting drugs to treat symptoms, not addressing lifestyle changes that can actually create wellness.

Don’t believe me? Look at the Surgeon General’s current “preventive” health plan, Healthy People 2020. While the goals of Healthy People are stated as reduced illness, disability, and death, what the plan actually stresses are assessments, diagnostic criteria, disease monitoring, and data collection.

The plan acknowledges behavior modification with dietary and lifestyle changes are important to reaching the Healthy People goals, but aside from a few sample awareness programs, the main “preventive” strategies are screening, screening, and more screening for diseases and illnesses you already have.

A “blueprint” for reformed health care compiled by the Center for American Progress and the Institute on Medicine as a Profession also has ideas for improving health care but doesn’t mention promoting wellness. The fact is no one seems to be discussing changing the paradigm of “managing sickness” that the U.S. is currently stuck in.

If you or a loved one receives a diagnosis of diabetes, this is nothing less than a complete life change. Diabetics must be mindful of their blood sugar levels to keep their disease in check. One of the most important parts of doing so is watching what you eat. You want to ensure that you are getting your fruits and vegetables, along with plenty of lean protein. Some foods can be added to your diet to help keep diabetes under control – keep reading to see ten foods which can be helpful to diabetics.

1. Vegetables. Packed with powerhouse nutrients, vegetables are naturally low in calories, and they’re full of fiber, so they’re plenty filling. Loading your plate with vegetables will automatically mean you’re eating fewer simple carbs (which raise blood sugar) and saturated fats (which increase insulin resistance). Aim to get four or five servings a day. (A serving is 1/2 cup canned or cooked vegetables or 1 cup raw vegetables.) Go easier on starchy vegetables — including potatoes, corn, and peas — which are higher in calories than other vegetables.

2. Fruit. Packed with almost all the same advantages as vegetables fruit is brimming with nutrients you need, it’s low in fat, it’s high in fiber, and it’s lower in calories than most other foods. Best of all, fruit is loaded with antioxidants that help protect your nerves, your eyes, and your heart.

Because fruit has more natural sugar and calories than most vegetables, you can’t eat it with utter abandon. Aim to get three or four servings a day. (A serving is one piece of whole fruit, 1/2 cup cooked or canned fruit, or 1 cup raw fruit.) Choose whole produce over juice. Many of the nutrients and a lot of the fiber are found in the skin, flesh, and seeds of fruit, so they’re lost during juicing, and more of the calories and sugar remain.

3. Beans. Beans are just about your best source of dietary fiber, which not only makes you feel full longer, it actually slows digestion and keeps blood sugar from spiking after a meal. This effect is so powerful that it can even lower your overall blood sugar levels.

Throw canned beans into every salad you make (rinse them first), and add them to pasta and chili. Black bean, split pea, or lentil soup is an excellent lunch, even if it comes from a can.

4. Cereal. The right breakfast cereal is your absolute best opportunity to pack more fiber into your day. There’s a bonus: Studies show that people who start the morning with a high-fiber cereal actually eat less later on. So don’t forgo breakfast. Better yet, choose a cereal with at least 5 grams fiber per serving. Good choices include Kashi GoLean Crunch! (10 grams), Kellogg’s Raisin Bran (8 grams), General Mills Multi-Bran Chex (8 grams), Post Wheat ‘N Bran Spoon Size (8 grams), Kellogg’s All-Bran Original (10 grams) and General Mills Fiber One (14 grams). Top your cereal with fruit and you’ve checked off a fruit serving for the day.

5. Fish. Fast and easy to prepare, fish is a good source of protein, and a great substitute for higher-fat meats. Also, fatty fish is the best source of omega-3 fatty acids, those remarkable good-for-you fats that help keep the arteries clear. People with diabetes often have high triglycerides and low levels of HDL, the ‘good’ cholesterol. Omega-3 fatty acids can improve both numbers. Aim to eat fish at least twice a week. Excellent sources of omega-3s are salmon, mackerel, and tuna.

6. Poultry breast. Versatile, extremely lean, and low in calories, chicken breast is practically a miracle food. Unlike steaks and hamburgers, it’s low in saturated fat, which raises ‘bad’ cholesterol and may increase insulin resistance, making blood sugar control more difficult. A 3-ounce serving of skinless chicken breast has only 142 calories and 3 grams fat. Turkey breast is even leaner and lower in calories.

7. Nuts. Nuts have several things going for them — and for you. They’re loaded with ‘good’ fats that fight heart disease. These fats have even been shown to help reduce insulin resistance and make blood sugar easier to control. Nuts are also one of the best food sources of vitamin E, an antioxidant that protects cells and may help prevent nerve and eye damage. They are rich in fiber and magnesium, both of which may help regulate your blood sugar. Studies suggest that including them in your diet may even help you lose weight — if you eat them in moderation. Don’t forget that they’re high in calories.

8. Olive oil. At the center of the famously heart-healthy Mediterranean diet is olive oil is considered a ‘good’ fat that helps slash the risk of heart attack — and has been shown to help keep blood sugar steady by reducing insulin resistance. So toss the butter and cook with olive oil instead. At home and in restaurants, dip your bread in a bit of the stuff. Just watch how much you eat, because at 119 calories per tablespoon, even ‘good’ fat can pack on the pounds.

9. Yogurt. Yogurt is rich in protein and another weight loss powerhouse: calcium. Several studies have shown that people who eat plenty of calcium-rich foods have an easier time losing weight — and are less likely to become insulin resistant. As a snack or for breakfast, choose nonfat plain yogurt, and add your own fresh fruit or a sprinkling of wheat germ or low-fat granola for a burst of extra nutrients.

10. Cinnamon. Believe it! Amazingly, just by sprinkling cinnamon on your foods, you could lower your blood sugar. Components in cinnamon help the body use insulin more efficiently, so more glucose can enter cells. A recent study found that in people with diabetes, just 1/2 teaspoon a day can significantly lower blood sugar levels. So go ahead and add powdered cinnamon to your whole wheat toast, oatmeal, baked apples, or even chicken dishes. Or soak a cinnamon stick in hot water to make a soothing and curative cup of cinnamon tea.

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DISCLAIMER

Nothing stated here should be considered as medical advice for dealing with a health problem. You should consult your health care professional for individual guidance for specific health problems. This blog is for informational, entertainment and educational purposes only, and is simply a collection of information in the public domain. Information conveyed herein is based on pharmacological and other records - both ancient and modern. No claims whatsoever can be made as to the specific benefits accruing from the use of any herb or nutrients.